>> announcer: this is "new day" with alisyn camerota and john berman. >> welcome to our viewers in the united states and all around the world. this is "new day." breaking news, moments ago, dr. anthony fauci told us right here on "new day," he is confident that the biden administration can vaccinate 100 million americans in the next hundred days. he wants to do even better than that. he thinks we can and will do even better than that. but at the same time, dr. fauci admits, he needs to find answers about the disappointing rollout of the vaccine. he says he doesn't quite understand yet why these vaccines that have been shipped

haven't all been administered. he's trying still to figure that out. in the meantime, he made some news about these variants that are spreading across the world. >> we are seeing a plateau in the number of cases. as we do that, that doesn't mean that all of a sudden everything is going to even off. we're still going to have a lot of hospitalizations, even though they tend to be plateauing and coming down. and we'll still have a lot of deaths. what we're hoping is that as we come to the end of january, we'll start to see that plateau and things will go down. but as dr. osterholm said, and we all realized, there's a possibility that with the variants here, we may have a dominance of those strains that tend to transmit more efficiently. the best thing you can do about that is to continue to uniformly adhere to the public health recommendations that we've spoken about time and again, from the wearing of masks to the

washing of hands, to avoiding congregant settings. that's the kind of thing that prevents surges, regardless of what the type of virus, the mutant of virus of what have you is there. that together with an increase in the rollout of vaccines is the thing that we should be concentrating on. >> okay. we have much more of that in a moment, but we also have breaking news overnight. the biden administration rolling out new executive orders to try to fix the economic crisis. president biden is pushing for things like a $15 minimum wage for federal workers in this $1.9 trillion stimulus package. but this morning, lawmakers have yet to even agree on the rules that will govern the senate. >> all right. i want to get the latest on coronavirus and what dr. fauci just told us. joining us knob, cnn chief medical correspondent, dr. sanjay gupta. sanjay, i was very interested in where we are today, right? with hospitalizations going down, with dr. fauci very pleased with. i mean, he's optimistic that maybe we have plateaued. but i wanted to dig into the

concerns about these new variants and whether or not that means we could see a new wave in the united states. he didn't rule that out, but i don't think he seems to think it's a giant cause of alarm this mor morning. >> right, that's what i took away from it, as well. i think that these variants are something we certainly have to pay attention to and there's a couple of them out there. one way to think about it, and i was speaking to some people who really study viral dynamics, even last night. these are obviously -- this uk variant, for example, much more transmissible. so what does that mean. there are several things that you have to pay attention to. one is, if something is more transmissible, it can become the dominant strain. we saw that before. the italian strain in the spring of last year was the dominant strain -- or the more transmissible strain, that started to become the dominant strain. according to some projections, this uk strain, for example,

could double in terms of its overall proportion every week. so if it's 1% this week, 2% next week, 4% the week after, and by march, it could become the dominant strain in this country. the second thing is like, what does it mean for overall the virus in this country, the numbers of overall new cases have been coming down a little bit. you want to follow that trend a little bit more carefully. deaths, as we know, these tragic deaths typically follow four weeks after the number of cases. they're still going up. but if cases continue to go down, deaths by sort of end of february should start to come down, as well. we will see. and then the final point is, do these variants, are they going to continue to respond to the current vaccines and so far the answer seems to be "yes." but we're not track theese variants nearly enough in this country. we would be getting ahead of the curve if we did that. right now we're only sequencing about 0.3% of the virus that's out there. we need to be doing much, much more than that to see how

widespread the variants are and if there's any new variants, as well. >> sanjay, i was very interested to hear dr. fauci talk about the confusion about vaccines. some states say they have vaccines sitting on the shelves. some places, like new york city's mayor, says they are about to run out of vaccines. what's the problem? why aren't we -- why isn't this streamlined? and he's been candid about his own confusion about some of this, as well, and he says we need to get on the ground to see what's happening. obviously, there needs to be a point person or some sort of, you know, task force to figure this out. this seems like something that kind of needs to happen like this morning. >> yeah, i totally agree, alisyn. and we're talking about arguably, the most precious commodities on the planet right now. it still baffles my mind that there was back and forth on, do we have reserve doses or not? some people say, look, are we making too big a deal about that? but, you know, if we're talking about 5, 10 million doses out of

40 million doses and we're not exactly sure if they've been held back or not or where they are. that's a problem. when you're dealing with something as precious as vaccines in the middle of a pandemic. let me show you a couple of things, in terms of where we are right now, and the percentage of people who have actually been vaccinated and the percentage of people who have received both of their doses. it's about 4.5% of the country, roughly, have received a dose of vaccine, 0.6% have received both doses. so less than a percent of the country right now, fully immunized from vaccines. but i think the larger point, alisyn, the one you're making is, right now, people are watching. they're thinking, look, i really want a vaccine. i don't even know sort of where to get it or when to get it. in fact, if you look at it, 60% of people right now, i believe in the country, this is according to kaiser family foundation, they're not sure when exactly to get if vaccine. 55% say they don't know where to get it. this is a problem. i mean, everyone talks about

this is as sort of the way out, it's a problem. it's true, some states will be different than other states. some states have more long-term care facilities, for example. those residents were first in line to get vaccinated. other places will have more health care workers. but it has been very uneven. i think that that's been the worry from the start. and dr. fauci is the only sort of bridge, really, between the last administration and this administration with this issue. the fact that we had two vaccines authorized. the fact that they got to the states from operation warp speed, great. i think a lot of people didn't think that was going to happen. but after that, is sort of when it fell apart. states all handled this very differently. >> a couple more things, one on the 100 million vaccinations in a hundred days. dr. fauci said he would like to see more than that. clearly at this point, given that we vaccinated a million people yesterday, you just do the math, if we don't get to 100 million in a hundred days, it means there's been backsliding. it means at this point, something's gone wrong. he said, yes, it's a goal. let's not make it a thing that

it's maybe not the highest goal, but he would like to see us do better than that. there was this other moment in the discussion. he clearly, and he said to the american people yesterday, he felt liberated. speaking to the press yesterday in the biden administration, compared to the trump administration, he talked at the podium yesterday in the white house about what it felt like to be restrained and the lack of facts in some ways during the trump administration. and i asked him about what the impact of that might have been. so, listen. >> did the lack of candor, did the lack of facts in some cases over the last year cost lives? >> you know, it very likely did. particularly when you're in the situation of almost being in a crisis with the number of cases and hospitalizations and deaths that we had. when you start talking about things that make no sense medically and no sense scientifically, that clearly is not helpful.

>> we also said he didn't want that to be a sound bite, to be fair to dr. fauci, but when dr. anthony fauci says that he thinks that the lack of candor cost lives over the past year, it's pretty significant, sanjay. >> it really is. and i think there's -- first of all, if he's saying it, because he's -- you know, he's measured in how he responds to these things. if he's saying it, it's absolutely true because, you know, it's a tough thing to sort of acknowledge. but you go back and look at the fact that we are spending so much time on therapies that did not work, and could be harmful, like hydroxychloroquine. it's not just that hydroxychloroquine was harmful, it was, to people who had covid, but it took our eyes off the ball on other potential things. the idea that herd immunity was a strategy that was pursued by the previous administration. a strategy that if it continued to sort of roll out, would cost, you know, hundreds of thousands, maybe a million more lives. even the things like the bleach, which got so much attention. those were harmful sort of things, because they, "a," hurt

people, even people died because of it, but also, it took our attention away from things that could actually matter. and i think that that's what he was responding to. i mean, i've got to tell you, just as a medical reporter, and i talked to dr. fauci all the time and many others, as well, it felt like we were stutter stepping, almost the entire year last year. just step, stutter step, back and forth, spending all my time making all of these notes, just constantly fact checking every single thing that we heard coming out. we couldn't move the knowledge fund forward, because we constantly had to check to see if what we were just told was even true. that made it really challenging. just a quick word on the hundred million shots in a hundred days. i mean, you know, it's interesting, and i'm a little surprised at how much the white house has sort of bristled at this idea that maybe that's undertargeting, because i thought it was great the way you asked the question. will we be backsliding if we don't continue to meet these goals? we're in a crisis situation, as

everyone has stated. but it's not just the amount of vaccination out there that is going to be necessary, it's the speed now at which those vaccines get out there. because we're racing not only against the virus, but the variants of these virus. and variants more likely occur as the virus spreads more and more. the vaccine can slow that down. it's got to be the speed of vaccination as well as the total number. >> sanjay, thank you. we look forward to talking to you more about this over the course of the next couple of hours. don't go far. breaking news, the biden administration releasing its plan to deal with the economic crisis caused by coronavirus. cnn's jeremy dlooiamond live ate white house. this is the day two message, jeremy. >> reporter: yeah, no doubt. the day one message, full day one, was focused on the health crisis facing america, the coronavirus pandemic. and you saw president biden sign about ten executive orders and actions to address that health crisis, including a new mask mandate, as it relates to

interstate travel. today you'll see the administration focus on the consequences of that health crisis, which is the economic crisis that this country has faced, with millions still out of work and millions with food insecurity. that's where president biden will begin today, an executive order focused on food insecurity and helping to expand benefits to americans who are facing that -- those trouble getting food on the table. you're going to see an increase in food stamps as a result of one of these executive orders. 15 to 20% increase in those food stamps, also known as s.n.a.p. benefits. and you're also going to see an increase in money to families whose children normally get school meals. that is another part of this executive order. then the second executive order that president biden intends to sign today is going to focus on laying the groundwork for a $15 minimum wage for federal employees and contractors. so that's not something that's going to kick in right away, but this executive order will set in motion a plan to do that in president biden's first 100

days. and the executive order will also revoke several federal -- several moves by president trump to revoke federal protections. so you're going to see some of those protections for civil service employees extraordinary, making it harder once again to fire them. and also, restore their collective bargaining powers. but the bottom line here, john, is that ultimately, while president biden is going to take some executive actions today, what they are also kbgoing to focus on, i'm sure this is what you'll hear from president biden this afternoon, the need for that $1.9 trillion economic relief package that he is pushing to get through congress. brian deese, the white house top economic adviser made very clear in a call yesterday with reporters that these executive actions are not a substitute for that $1.9 trillion package, but instead, a critical lifeline to hold americans over. john? >> jeremy, thank you very much. keep us posted over the next several minutes. intense negotiations already in the senate.

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this morning, the senate is still trying to decide how to divide up their powers in a 50/50 split and that's putting issues on hold like impeachment, cabinet confirmations. joining us now is rachael bade and cnn political commentator errol louis, the political anchor for spectrum news. and you are a master tea leaf reader of the machinations on capitol hill. what are you watching for today? >> well, we're going to have to see is whether or not chuck schumer really wants to give power to the grim repair, mitch mcconnell, who proudly used that title for his ability to kill democratic hopes and legislation. the question is going to really be whether or not the child gets strangled in the crib, so to speak. if you make it so that mitch

mcconnell and the republican minority, in the senate can stop legislation by requiring a 60% vote on every piece of meaningful legislation, in effect, the biden administration's agenda comes to a grinding halt. it's the single most important fight that chuck schumer is going to have as majority leader and we'll have to see how he maneuvers through it to make sure that he's got a chance at enacting some kind of a democratic agenda. >> rachael, it seems as we are now on day two of the biden presidency, the biden administration, there are two just giant major questions and issues that hang over everything else. number one, the response to the pandemic, what can the new white house do to make the numbers better, get more people vaccinated? and then a connected, separate issue is, how much bipartisanship can joe biden really get? how much of the unity that he talks so much about, like 36 hours ago, how much of it is

achievable and realistic? when will you know? what are you watching for over the next few days that will tell you which way that's headed? >> yeah, i mean, we're seeing a pretty clear indication right now. up on the hill yesterday, we heard from a lot of republicans who were saying that this covid relief package, something that you think would get a lot of bipartisan support , is a nonstarter for them. a lot of republicans are saying, they just passed $900 billion worth of stimulus and help around the holidays and they think this package is too big. so i think biden is really going to face a sort of critical test in the next couple of days. does he want to sort of lower his ambitions to try to keep that bipartisan status or thing he was aiming for, does he want to try for that? or does he want everything that he has proposed in his coronavirus package, the minimum wage increase, the $1,400 stimulus checks, is he willing to say, okay, i'm not going to

be working with republicans perhaps as much as i wanted, but i'm going to get these things that i think the country really needs right now. >> and errol, you think that president biden can draw a lesson from his time in the obama white house and, what, do the opened of what obama did? >> well, absolutely. one of the great lessons of the obama/biden administration was that when they needed stimulus, when the country was flat on its back economically from the mortgage implosion, they pushed and they pushed and they pushed and they held for political reasons to a lower number than what their own economists told them was needed to revive the economy. and it all worked out in the end, but it took much longer for the recovery than it should have. and many of those same economist are part of the biden team. i'm sure they're going to tell them the same thing all over again. he himself knows after rescuing the auto industry and bringing the economy back took longer than it should have. that's the great lesson of that episode, it's the lesson frankly

of the first part of this pandemic. when you give people enough money that they can survive and they can pay for goods and keep the economy going, it is a much, much, much better solution than to be stingy about it for purely political reasons, because of this abstraction called the national debt. it just doesn't make sense. and that will be another one of these early civil rights that joe biden is going to have to wage. >> rachael, i want to play you some sound from dr. anthony fauci. we just spoke to him moments ago. it's about something that's become oddly an issue in the last two days. whether or not the goal of vaccinating or getting vaccines to 100 million people in the first hundred days of the administration, whether or not that's too low of a gold. just listen to what he said. >> you know, obviously, you want to do as best as you possibly can. i would like it to be a lot more. the goal was set, but you don't want to get fixated on w, was tt an undershoot or an overshoot. you go for 100 million in a hundred days. if we do better than that, which

i personally think we likely will, that's great. i don't want to get fixated. i saw yesterday there was that back and forth between that. we're going to go for it, for as much as you possibly can. when you set a goal, if you do better than the goal, that's terrific. i hope we do. >> the reason i'm bringing this up to you, rachael, in a political discussion, is because, you know, there's probably a reason why the incoming biden administration set that goal. you don't want to set a goal that's not achievable at this point. and when he was pressed on it yesterday, president biden said, oh, come on, man, give me a break. you told me i couldn't achieve that before. but you pick a number you can reach at this point. and it's interesting that some of the pushback on the republican side now, steve scalise is out there saying, you should be saying 200 million. >> yeah, it's pretty obvious that the biden administration is trying to sort of set expectations, if not lower them a little bit. they want to be able to say that they achieved something significant in terms of the pandemic. i mean, yesterday, one of the top story lines in the morning was, you know, the

administration saying they came in and there was no plans from the trump administration about how to address the pandemic. and i think the point they were trying to make was that, look, we are really starting from scratch. again, sort of a moment to try to tamper expectations and say, look, we're dealing with something, you know, that the former administration hasn't helped us with, at all. we heard something very similar from cedric richmond yesterday, a playbook, we did an interview with him and he was sort of really reluctant to sort of articulate certain goals that would identify what success looks like within a hundred days. and i think this is purely, of course, sort of political in that biden doesn't want to say or doesn't want to be seen to have failed or fallen down on the job to sort of stall momentum. it's a political thing. >> errol, how about what's upcoming with the senate impeachment trial of donald trump? it's interesting, some of the lawmakers who were attacked during the insurrection felt very strongly one way, that day,

and now seem to be feeling differently. here is congressman kevin mccarthy. >> reporter: the president bears responsibility for wednesday's attack on congress by mob rioters. >> do you believe that president, former president trump, provoked? >> i don't believe he provoked, if you listen to what he said at the rally. >> will the real kevin mccarthy please stand up? but, errol, what does this mean for the trial? >> every day that passes between january 6th and the actual impeachment trial, which will be the main accountability mechanism other than criminal prosecution, for those who incited this riot, it's going to be harder and harder for people to put aside all of what they have to do right now. we are in the middle of a national emergency, and go back to that day and remember the fear and remember the danger. and try to make sure it never happens again. more mundane considerations start to creep in.

and that's what you heard from the very mundane mr. mccarthy, just talking about the politics of the moment, as opposed to the institution that he is sworn to defend. those who want to really get back to politics as usual, yes, you're going to see them downplay it, try to shift blame, try to act as if it was the fault of the capitol police. gee, why weren't they more ready for this attack that we organized. it's going to be a very messy discussion. hopefully, it will be the impeachment trial that really sets all of this straight about all of what happened and the inspectors general, there are four of them that are looking into what happened, we'll get a full accounting of this. you're not going to get it from the politicians, alisyn. >> you know, when kevin mccarthy pulls off the latex mask, it's kevin mccarthy underneath. it turns out, it's still kevin mccarthy. >> ruh-roh, scooby. thank you both very much. we want to take a moment to remember some of the more than 410,000 americans lost to

coronavirus. trevor preston was a corrections officer in texas for more than 15 years. known as a mama bear, she was just 57 years old. san diego grandfather ruben valdez died after a 75th birthday party. 18 family members, including ruben, later tested positive for coronavirus. don ruben, as he was known, was a beloved retired construction worker who cared for his community. he volunteered to clean up local parks. lieutenant john reynolds served 25 years as a police officer in garden grove, california. he worked his way up from the patrol division, working as a gang officer, a s.w.a.t. team member, undercover detective, and head of the youth services unit. garden grove's mayor praised him as deeply loved by the entire community and a hero. reynolds was 59 years old. we'll be right back. find your rhythm. your happy place.

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this morning, senate majority leader mitch mcconnell is asking that the senate impeachment trial not begin for another two weeks. how is that being received on the democratic side? joining me now is the new democratic senator from california, alex padilla. thank you so much for being with us. congratulations, welcome to the u.s. senate. the honeymoon is over. i'm jumping right into business here. mitch mcconnell is saying, he wants to wait until the middle of february for the impeachment trial. how do you feel about that? >> justice delayed is justice denied. it's time to get on with the business of the people, both in terms of responding to the covid-19 pandemic, we must protect public health, but we must defend our democracy without delay, and that means holding donald trump accountable. >> that means you do not support waiting two weeks to begin the trial? >> look, i think sooner rather than later. what i'm fearful of, frankly, is that sththis is simply a delay tactic.

in two weeks, then what? it's time to move on with the people's business. >> one of the things that's holding up progress is that mcconnell wants some kind of agreement that democrats don't want to do away with the filibuster. turns out you don't have the votes to do away with it anyway, but mcconnell wants it in writing? your view? >> what's he afraid of? that members of his own caucus may break and actually agree with democrats on a bipartisan basis that it's time to modernize the rules of the senate? come on, the voters have spoken. yes, it's a 50/50 majority right now with vice president harris casting a lot of deciding votes in the months and couple of years ahead. it's time to start bringing items to the floor and let the debate begin. >> do you feel as if the filibuster is worth preserving? >> look, i appreciate what the filibuster has represented in terms of history, but if we look at the last few years and what the practical impact of the

filibuster has been, we surpassed the first year of the first case of covid-19 and 400,000 people who have died. it's the rules of the senate that have been in part keeping the senate from acting more aggressively in terms of response. and that's just one issue. there's been issue after issue that we haven't been able to make progress on over the years, that, you know, the filibuster has stood in the way of. so the time to act is now on covid, on expanding access to health care, climate change, common sense gun safety reform, criminal justice reform, and so much more. >> i get the sense that you are eager to start getting things done. on that front, president biden wants bipartisanship when it comes to the covid relief bill, but how long are you willing to wait to get republicans onboard? >> look, i think the real question is not how long am i

willing to wait, it's how long are american families willing to wait? american families that are struggling to put food on the table, small business owners struggling to keep their doors open. families that have loved ones in hospitals, on ventilators. how long should they wait for the united states congress to do the right thing? >> i say we need to act yesterday. you know, one example, this debate about, you know, $2,000 versus $600 on checks, direct assistance for families. those aren't stimulus. those are survival checks. and that's after months and months of lack of support from congress for the american people. so let's get those out the door now, but know that we're going to need to do more in the months ahead, because, yes, while there's two vaccines that have been approved, we clearly have more to do in terms of increasing supply, improving distribution plans. actually administering vaccines to the people who need it. >> i guess my question is, is it worth waiting weeks to try to convince ten republican senators

to vote along with democrats. or do you think you ought to move right to reconciliation, which would let you get this done, with just the bare majority? >> look, i just got here, i'm getting to know my colleagues. you know, in my heart of hearts, do i want to give some benefit of the doubt? sure. if we can wait another week and have a much more meaningful response, but i know that we have been waiting for years and years and years to see much more bipartisan action than we've seen in congress of late. so if democrats have the numbers, let's do what we can now. it doesn't mean that we can't work on a bipartisan basis to continue to do more in the weeks and months ahead. it doesn't have to be an either/or. >> at the beginning of the interview, i said, the honeymoon is over, let's jump right to business. i actually do want to ask you about what it was like to take the oath for you, as the first latino senator from the state of california. we have the pictures here on the senate floor. you're taking the oath right beside senator ossoff and senator werner.

quite an honor taking the oath from the first female vice president of the united states. how did that feel? >> incredible. a lot of history in one moment. a lot of history in that frame. but i've got to tell, it definitely comes with mixed emotions, as tremendous as this milestone is for me, for my family, for the state of california, my heart's breaking that my wife and my kids couldn't stand right next to me. why? you know, traveling cross-country during the middle of a covid-19 pandemic comes with some risk. add to that the security situation at the capitol. so it was a sobering reminder of the work ahead, not just the severity of it, but the urgency of it. >> senator padilla, congratulations on joining the u.s. senate. thank you for being with us. we look forward to speaking with you on "new day" in the future. >> thank you very much. >> so members of the national guard say they feel betrayed this morning after being booted from the u.s. capitol, forced to rest in an unheated garage for hours. details on a live report from the pentagon, next.

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thousands of national guard members are back inside the u.s. capitol this morning after the troops were banished to a cramped and unheated parking garage on thursday. what was going on here? cnn's barbara starr is live at the pentagon with more. what happened, barbara? >> good morning, alisyn. nobody's very clear on who p banished them, but indeed, hundreds of national guardsmen who have been here for inauguration security duty on capitol hill were sent on their rest breaks into this parking garage. look at the pictures. you know, to be on a floor, and it occurs to you and me right away, fumes from automobiles, oil leaks possibly on the floor, very limited bathroom facilities. and once these pictures were seen, however, that's perhaps where the good news starts. many members of congress weighed in and, you know, basically said, what the heck is going on, and moved very quickly last night to get this decision reversed and get them back into

the capitol hill complex. again, taking their rest breaks on floor, but inside where there's heat, light, and bathrooms. the national guard knows that they may be called upon to sleep on the ground when they respond to natural disasters in the united states, to crisis situations, but this time, it's thard to see how it happened. it wasn't necessary. the facilities were there. they are back inside. and now, here in washington, many members of the national guard over the coming days will start heading home. 25,000 have been here for the inauguration. they will start heading back to their home stations, but some certainly staying on kplil, we are told, for many days to come. >> so former president trump issued a number of pardons to friends and allies when in office. so when he issued a wave of pardons to some seriously questionable characters on his way out the door, it was seen as more of just the same. but it shouldn't be just more of

more of just the same. john avlon with a reality check. >> tone comes from the top of everything organization, especially presidential administrations. and one way to gauge that was the sheer number of indictments directed at the previous president's inner circle. nine people indicted or imprisoned. now, that's more than double the past four presidential administrations combined. but in the chaos of the past few weeks, you might have missed trump pardoning almost all of them on his way out the door. the only ones he didn't pardon were rick gatetz and michael cohen, the two that cooperated with authorities. the sin wasn't breaking the law, but cooperating with the law. trump tried to normalize corr corruption. he pardoned former republican congressman duke cunningham, who had bribe menu on his congressional stationary for military contractors. his two earliest congressional endorsers, chris collins and

duncan hunter, got pardons for insider trading and misuse of campaign funds, respectively. trump commuted steve stockman, who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars meant for charity and pardoned a former north carolina gop chairman and a former arizona lawmaker convicted of bribery. but these weren't just partisan favors, he pardoned former illinois governor rod blagojevich, a democrat who essentially tried to sell barack obama's senate seat and commuted the sentence of former detroit mayor, kwame kilpatrick, who turned his city hall into what prosecutors called a private profit machine. and that's not all. he commuted the sentences of some of the biggest medicaid fraudster and real estate racketeers in american history, including one new york businessman sentenced to more than 800 years in prison for money laundering and massive insurance fraud. as former republican congressman peter smith told "the new york times," he does not just distrust the law, he scorns it, sees it as an obstacle to doing whatever he wants. it is classic strongman behavior.

so while trump campaigned as a law and order candidate, he really wanted order, not law. and he tried to convince his supporters ts that every politin was just as corrupt. that lying and cheating were normal. they're not. a look at the records of recent past presidents show it's just not true. the back/biden administration served eight years with not a single indictment of senior officials. and even nixon, who had more administration indictments than trump, did not pardon his watergate co-conspirators. the biden administration just beginning. there will be mistakes and stumbles and scandals. but because of the sordid chapter that just ended, this statement by the new president to his appointees jumped out at me. >> if you're ever working with me and i hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, i promise i will fire you on the spot. >> it's a simple, but profound demand for personal decency. but it's precisely what we've been missing. it doesn't need to explicitly warn against corruption, because

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the inauguration of president joe biden has rattled extremists and conspiracy theorists alike. message board resveal their confusion today. so what are the fringe followers of qanon and the proud boys saying now that donald trump is gone? joining us is ariya kofler, who studies the far right. great to see you again. >> you, too. >> you've been monitoring the online chatter of these extremist groups and it's been very interesting what they've been saying and what's been happening since joe biden's inauguration. what are they talking about?

>> well, as you said, there's a lot of confusion, and different groups are sort of splintering somewhat. you have a faction actually quite a wide faction that's really angry. trump told them he was going to carry on. he was going to stay president, and they think they convinced the election was fixed, but they thought he had a plan. and it turned out he didn't have a plan. he left the white house. and many of them are angry that he's quit on them. trump told them that joe biden would be a communist and america was going to be destroyed and then he went home to florida. so, you know, there's a sense of like, you know, trump quit, too. trump also betrayed us, amongst some of them. that's only one strand. i can talk more if you want about this. >> well, a couple of things also. "the new york times" is reporting on the language that some of these groups like the proud boys are now using about donald trump. quote, they are calling him extraordinarily weak. a shill. quote, a total failure. weak and flaccid.

what did they want him to do? i mean, were they expecting pardons? what did they actually think was going to happen? >> they weren't expecting pardons. they were expecting a military coup. or something along those lines. they were expecting that donald trump would remain the president and he would remain it by rounding up his enemies and doing what he wanted to the country. in fact, one thing i and other analysts are seeing is that some of these more radical ideological extremists are trying to use this moment to recruit some of the pro-trump extremists into their midst saying, you know, trump and biden, they're both controlled. come and join us white national groups or violent boogaloo type groups. >> and is that working? or is there just so much disaffection now for who they thought was their leader, who they thought they were perpetrating these acts on his behalf. is it kind of demoralizing them?

>> i think there's a lot of demoralizing out there? i'm not going to say the majority of them are angry at trump. certainly confused and disappointed. there is a sense that there's no point in engaging in politics anymore. remember these people were absolutely convinced the election is rigged, and i think the next one will be rigged, too. so there's no buzz for example around possible 2024 run by president trump as you might think. instead they're saying the ballot box has failed us. we need to look to the bullet box. >> that's obviously very alarming. these one of the things "the new york times," according to "the new york times," here's one of the things they've seen the proud boys saying. to all demoralized trump supporters, there is hope. there is an alternative. aband on the gop and the dems. >> what is the battle cry now? >> there's a move, and this isn't new. it's been around three or four years, even before trump was elected, it started during the

election campaign in 2016 to form some sort of a patriot party. the lion party that would follow in trump's ideology, even if he wouldn't necessarily be their leader. if you look at his policies, i think perhaps this might be an extreme thing to say, but you'd want to call it a third positionist or neofascist party. i'm not sure such a thing will come to pass but it's something that people were calling for and there was a report in "the wall street journal" that trump himself had heard of this and was considering setting up such a party. >> i think he used that term, patriot party. and so help us understand, are they digging in? are they getting more extreme? are they suggesting that they'll resort to more violence, or is there some sort of breaking of the spell? now that what they expected to happen on inauguration day didn't happen, are some sort of coming to their senses? >> i think there's an element of selection bias that makes it

hard to tell. the people who have given up, you don't see them posting in these forums, talking about it because they've given up. they've gone back to their lives and they're just not there anymore. so sometimes you might see one of these groups becoming more and more extreme because the more moderate extremists are leaving. so i think there are a lot of disaffected that have given up. still a lot of anger in particular at republicans who voted to certify the election and you might see people talking about, we've got to stay in the republican party, but never actually vote for them ever again. so you might have a lot of people voting in republican primaries and staying home on election day and taking out their anger other in ways. >> so in terms of your, you know, defcon level, your concern level because you monitor this all the time and you're the person who saw the violence being -- you predicted there would be this violent uptick on january 6th.

you saw weeks earlier what was going to happen at the u.s. capitol. you called it. and so now, in terms of your concern level, has it gone down or up? >> that's a really interesting question. i think right now it's hard to point to a -- any particular threat and say this particular thing is more likely than it was. that said, there's definitely an aura of menace in which, again, dangerous, troubling individuals or small militias might take extreme actions, extreme violent actions. >> in terms of the qanon followers who believe this mind-blowing conspiracy theory about government and pedophiles and how donald trump was going to save them and he was going to free children who were in the basement of a pizza parlor or whatever it is. are they coming to their senses? are they -- i understand there's all this cognitive dissonance of what happened? how did the apocalypse not

happen that we were expecting? we've talked before on this program about people having to be deprogrammed. can that happen on their own? are you seeing that? or is this going to require some type of intervention? >> there were definitely some people who hung up on qanon the day the inauguration walked away. that said, there were a lot that lost their faith that night and woke up the next morning convinced that there must still be a plan, that trump is still in control. some of the messages that i've seen is they're convinced that joe biden right now is not in the white house. he's in a movie set and is really under military arrest and is being forced to pretend to be the president in a fake white house. or there are also those that are convinced the whole district of columbia is being occupied by the military is considered no longer part of the united states. and everyone who is there, you know, the president, the vice president, all of congress, are in open-air jail. there's really wild ideas out

there and qanon hasn't gone away. it might become a bit less about trump as time goes on. lots of voices i've heard that say they believe that trump is not the president anymore but now the military is in charge. america is a military dictatorship, i guess, and they're very happy about that. i think it's hard to tell. again, some of these guys when they leave, they are gone. you don't see them anymore. in smaller qanon communities that are harder to monitor, there, nobody is losing the faith. people are still convinced this was part of the plan. >> the leaps of logic that have to jump across the grand canyon for some of these things to -- they don't make sense. thank you very much. we really appreciate all of your insight into these groups. thanks for sharing it with us. >> thanks for having me. there's a new interview with dr. anthony fauci. he's weighing in on president biden's coronavirus strategy. "new day" continues right now.

>> this is "new day" with alisyn camerota and john berman. >> welcome to our viewers. this is "new day." dr. anthony fauci on "new day" telling us he's confident the biden administration can vaccinate 100 million americans in the next 100 days. dr. fauci says they'll likely do even better than that. but he needs to find answers about the rocky rollout of the vaccines. what's gone wrong. and he also concedes a lack of candor and facts during the trump administration likely cost lives. dr. fauci in his own words in a moment. >> also, the biden administration rolled out new sk executive orders. his main work is pushing for a $1.9 trillion stimulus package, but this morning, lawmakers can't even agree on the rules that will govern the senate. we'll begin with dr. fauci